


Scar Across the Desert

by ladyarcherfan3



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy, Star Wars: Bloodline - Claudia Gray
Genre: Gen, Introspection, Jabba the Hutt - Freeform, Shmi Skywalker - Freeform, Slavery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-04
Updated: 2018-05-04
Packaged: 2019-05-02 03:35:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 987
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14535759
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ladyarcherfan3/pseuds/ladyarcherfan3
Summary: Luke never knew his grandmother, but he knew her history.An introspective attempt to work through Luke considering Shmi's slavery and what he could do about it.





	Scar Across the Desert

The headstones featured in some of Luke’s earliest memories. Stark and sharp edged against the soft landscape around it, but the same dun color, only their shadows could be seen until one drew close. His aunt and uncle would take him out there occasionally to pay their respects, and to keep the markers clear of the ever shifting sands. There was always a mingled sense of pain and happiness and love in Uncle Owen’s voice as he recounted stories of his father and mother, the escapades and incidents of his own childhood. Luke knew and cared about those stories in a vague, sympathetic way as he grew older. The other marker, the other name, drew him like a magnet.

_Shmi Skywalker_

The history of his life and family hadn’t been held back when he was young, but as he grew older and asked harder questions, the details didn’t grow any deeper. Luke interpreted it as grief - Owen had lost his mother at a young age, then lost a stepmother and the chance at a stepbrother. It made sense that he wouldn’t want to talk about it a lot. And it made sense that Luke’s own parents’ stories would be vague, since his father was barely ever on planet as a freighter pilot, and his mother had been from a Core world. 

He poked and prodded and slowly got more and more stories and learned more about his family’s past, as much as his aunt and uncle could tell him. And as he took on more responsibilities around the farm, he also learned about threats that hung like a dark shadow over the desert, ephemeral but just as dangerous as womp rats and Tusken raiders. 

“They’ve lost most of the power they used to have, but the Hutts are still the worst mobsters and slave traders on Tatooine,” Owen said one day as talk of water payments and protection deals filled the gossip at Toche Station. He turned and spat into the sand, the purposeful loss of water a mark of his complete disgust how much he meant his words. “Keep your head down and be smart.”

Unable to get more answers from Owen, Luke went to his aunt. She recalled the stories of how Cliegg Lars had met Shmi Skywalker in Anchorhead. Shmi had been a slave, and Clieg freed her. That particular bit of the story had never been told to Luke before. 

“She didn’t talk a lot about her past, but she did say she had been taken as a slave as a small child by one of the Hutts, and sold again to a junk dealer,” Beru explained. “Owen cared for her, and it hurts him to think that she had been a slave, and that it is still a reality. He is afraid something like that could happen to me and you, and he shows it by being gruff.”

Luke accepted the hug Beru offered, and then shrugged off the affection with a display of his own brand of gruffness. But he didn’t forget what she had told him.

The small kernel of his family history dug down deep, lodged somewhere near his desire to get off the planet and make some sort of life for himself like his father had. It was a quiet thing. A strong thing. It set in his heart the idea that he would leave, but come back one day; he would make sure that his aunt and uncle lived comfortably. He would see to it, somehow, that mob blackmail wouldn’t happen. That slaves on Tatooine would just be left in the past, but well remembered to avoid it in the future. 

He never spoke any of this out loud. It was never a conscious thought, but it was a part of his heart. 

The galaxy scooped him up and tossed him around. Paths and truths he could have never even imagined opened before him. A family was lost, another found, and then splintered again. 

He came back to Tatooine, righteousness and power hanging around him like a cloak. 

The people Luke had come to care about with his whole heart were treated as things. Han was held prisoner, frozen like so much meat. Luke refused to speak Jabba's language. The mob boss piled threats on his head. Luke parried with his own. Jabba laughed as he dealt out death. Luke stayed alive. Jabba put Leia and her strident voice of justice in chains. Luke helped to free them. 

Luke burned with the same hot focus as his lightsaber did as he cut down those who followed a slave owning mob boss, and tried to bite back a grinning snarl as he destroyed the marks of greedy power. 

There was some dark part of him that was jealous that Leia killed Jabba. It flicked out a in a moment, a shadow struck by sunlight. His desire had been removed, and abstract. Leia had been hurt and chained. Her fire moved her to seek her own justice. No one could deny her that, and she deserved to be lauded. 

The first time he heard Leia called Huttslayer, he felt pride along with the old grief that she had been subjected to the humiliation in the first place. Wonder swelled up as he heard versions of her story throughout the galaxy, when he saw how much she meant to people who had to fight their way out of places and mindsets that sought to dehumanize them. 

There was no way to know how Shmi Skywalker would have felt, but it gave Luke some peace to think that the legacy of her name would continue. He hoped that there was some way she would know that the name Skywalker stood in support of Leia Organa the Huttslayer - the woman who had been fighting for justice and freedom for years and took back her personhood from a monster with her own hands.

**Author's Note:**

> There was a post http://lafseanchai.tumblr.com/post/169165273899/a-brief-thought-on-rotj that got my brain going, and I may have done a better job in the tags than I even did here, and I may revisit the idea more in depth later, but I wanted to start getting some of the ideas and the feelings into words.
> 
> Title is from Erin Mckeown's The Jailer.
> 
> All mistakes are my own.


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